Public transport Bentleigh top priority
EIGHT people have put their hands up for the hotly contested seat of Bentleigh, with most rating public transport as their top priority.
South East
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EIGHT people have put their hands up for the hotly contested seat of Bentleigh.
Sitting MP Elizabeth Miller only won the seat by 0.9 per cent last time around and Labor candidate Nick Staikos is hoping to wrestle it from her.
Leader issued questions without notice to the candidates and the most important issue was clearly public transport, with nearly all mentioning it as their top priority.
Ms Miller spruiked the government’s current plan to build a train connection through Fisherman’s Bend.
“Public transport is very important in Bentleigh, it’s been neglected for the last 11 years, but since the Napthine Coalition Government came into office we’ve turned that around,” Ms Miller said.
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But Mr Staikos said the Liberal party vision was “to remove Flinders St from the Frankston line”.
“That is not a solution for the people of Bentleigh,” Mr Staikos said.
The Sex Party’s Ross James McCawley pushed his party’s idea to have 24-hour public transport over the weekend.
Greens candidate Sean Mulcahy and independent Chandra Ojha both wanted to align bus timetables with train timetables to cut down on waiting times.
One thing was certain though — all parties agreed that it still needed some work.
Sofia Telemzouguer from People Power Victoria took a different tack, and put new smart metres legislation at the top of her list of to-dos.
“Our main goals are to restore human and democratic rights for the state of Victoria and to restore consumer rights which have been denied for such a long time,” Ms Telemzouguer said.
Three candidates, Mr McCawley and Ms Telemzouguer Rise Up Australia’s Kelley Moldovan, when asked by Leader, were unable to name the current Victorian treasurer Michael O’Brien.
All successfully listed their electoral suburbs.
Family First candidate David Clark was the only candidate not to participate. Mr Clark listed contact details for Family First representative Shane Clark on the VEC website. When contacted, Shane Clark said the candidate would not participate in an interview.